Witch trials

The main hall of the Papal Palace.

This is the main hall that only the Pope and his entourage can enter, the outside is guarded by all kinds of guards layer by layer, on weekdays even a day mosquito can't get in, at this time when the Pope has just been assassinated, it is even more densely lined up with all kinds of organs and guards against witches.

The Pope, who was being closely guarded, was now curled up in his seat with a face full of fear, his chest rising and falling violently, panting so hard that he was about to vomit.

The fear of escaping from death at the hands of the Empress of Heart was still like a sword hanging over his head, and the other party stepped on his head, looked at him with eyes as indifferent and hateful as those of an ant, and lowered their heads and said to him:

"What in the world gave you the confidence to say the words you are my father?"

The Pope, who had never suffered such a close threat of death after the [Heart of the Witch] trials, looked up in a trance, and across from him was the mirror, the mirror that Heart had stopped moving when he looked at it.

As he is about to commit suicide under Heart's spell, Heart stops moving as if frozen in time, and they take him to the bottom of the cell.

-Like what's more frightening about the enemy killing you is that you don't really know why the enemy spared you.

The Pope closed his eyes in trembling fear, but not without a lucky thought-it was all right, the prison at the bottom of the Sky City was so hard that there was absolutely no way any man could have escaped from where he was!

But at the same time, he thought in a trance--

What was it that made the one he had judged with his own hands, his own child, so powerful, and what was it that spared him?

Is it because he's his father?

If the Pope had asked this question, and Phoebe had heard it outside the door, she might have broken down her pretense of innocence and laughed out loud because of the sheer hilarity of what the man had said.

Even if there were 10,000 bad revenge stories in this world where the poor child of a scumbag father has mercy on his biological father and lets him off the hook because of affection, there would certainly not be the one where the protagonist is named Heart.

--This guy was the kind of tough guy who could put his adoptive and biological fathers and twenty-three stallions in heat together.

A man who dares to make a fool out of himself with his Heart will only bring about his own demise.

Prison at the bottom of Sky City.

Heart's arms and legs were suspended by two thin, long, white bone chains from the loops on either side of the cell, his shoulders were torn straight and immobile by this tensioned bone chain, his long crimson hair slipped from the back of his bare neck covered in bruises to the front of his blade, blood dripping down the ends of his hair to the ground, which trembled a little.

He slowly lifted his head to look at something directly above him and couldn't help but have a lazy grin on his face.

"No wonder I was told that the prison at the bottom of Sky Island was the best prison in the world for men, and that I would never be able to run away, so it's because of these things."

"I can't believe I hid the male eel and made it into a prison, that's quite something."

Heart's head is a huge, transparent glass pool, this pool is filled with millions of roots, is constantly flopping male eels, the sides of the glass pool is embedded into the rocky crevices of the island of the sky, Heart was imprisoned at the bottom of the pool, he looked up, you can see through the bottom of the glass eels wriggling on the entanglement of the gray body, as if a root of living over the noodles boiling in the pool. like a living spaghetti noodle, boiling over in the pool water.

The bone chain in his hand would not have been able to trap him, but the loops on both sides of this chain were stuck to the glass, and as soon as he ripped it off, this entire pool of male eels would tilt down and pour onto him, drowning him and entangling and crawling up his body.

Eels are pervasive, and male eels in particular - a monster that is said to be digestible only by male intestinal fluids.

If he didn't want to swallow the digestive eel in reverse, then he'd better not do anything rash-the bishop who had brought Heart here threatened him so viciously, but at the same time fear and hesitation lurked in the depths of his eyes.

Despite the lip service that this was the one place in the world where a man could surely be kept, no one knew if this place could keep an eye on Heart, so this Cardinal carefully watched Heart's expression and realized that not only was he not angry, but instead he snickered very softly with a vague smirk on his face:

"A prison that must hold men? Are you sure?"

The Cardinal was stunned for a moment, and then he saw Heart turn his head over, his tone light and sarcastic as he tilted his head back to the top of the cell, his violet pupils reflecting the boiling, wildly writhing eels without a ripple:

"Aren't there more women locked up on this island?"

The Cardinal didn't understand what Heart was trying to express as he continued to colorfully threaten, "Don't you dare try to escape! In addition to the male eel pond as a layer of mechanism, we also have another layer of mechanism that is naturally formed on this island, you definitely can't run away!"

"What organ?" Heart cocked his head on his arm in boredom as he looked over at the Cardinal, the smile on his face actually carrying a sense of indescribable seduction, "I've lived on this island for so long, and I didn't know that I didn't know of any other naturally occurring organs?"

"Will you tell me?"

The cardinal quickly looked away, breathing heavily-just less than a second of looking squarely into that overly beautiful face, those violet eyes, and he began to be distracted and disoriented, what a terrible sorcery!

"The island was trafficked to the Pope by a very mysterious gentleman." It was clear that at this moment he should have left when he had imprisoned Heart, but his mouth went on uncontrollably explaining at Heart's questioning, the resulting fear and fascination on his face twisting into an eerie expression as his voice spoke in a hard voice, "When that gentleman sold the island to the Bishop, he told the Pope that it was an island that would never fall to the ground, and that it would be suspended forever in the the air, a city in the sky for all to look up to."

Heart The expression on his face faded, and he inclined his head slightly toward the cardinal, "And then what?"

"Did he say anything else? Like why the island was being sold to the Pope?"

The cardinal shook his head, "No, none of us know the course of the transaction, only that the gentleman sold the island to the Pope."

Heart stared at the other man, "How much did he ...... that gentleman offer when he bought the island?"

--He had always known that the island was sold by Bai Liu, but he didn't understand or get it; the other party was clearly a god, and the cost and expenses of a casual trip to take him out to have fun were huge, and it didn't seem like someone who was so short of money that he needed to sell the island, or such a bizarre island in the sky.

Although ...... he himself knows that without this island in the sky, there will be other islands in the sky to bear the ugly desires of these men, this island is Bai Liu just traffickers, he does not know what will happen later, he is just an outsider.

But during those four years, when Heart learned that the island used to be Bai Liu's, and when thunderstorms raged outside, Heart couldn't help but look out the window and wait for the strange guest wearing a mask to step onto the island, something else was uncontrollably mixed into that heartfelt feeling of anticipation.

...... It was as if Bai Liu -- the god who had been the first to take him off the island, the guest who had taken him to see the sea, to see the sky, to see the earth, the friend who had stretched out his hand to him, who had smiled softly and answered all his requests and said it was all right, the one who was supposed to be the one who had brought him the brightest happy The one who should have brought him the brightest and happiest memories was also bearing his pain for more than ten years with this territory that had once been his own.

Heart wondered uncontrollably, "Why? Why would Bai Liu sell the island?

Is it really just about the money?

"That gentleman did not ask for money." The Cardinal answered Heart, "He made a deal with the Pope that had nothing to do with money."

"Deal?" Heart repeats the word word for word as he slowly raises his head, "What deal?"

"That gentleman said that he had come in response to the Pope's desires and wishes, that he had come to grant the Pope's wishes, and that trafficking gave the Pope an island that floated in the sky, where he could do anything and would not be easily detected, and that only those whom you would allow to be on the island would be allowed to be on the island." The Cardinal looked into Heart's momentarily vacant eyes and took two steps back with some trepidation, his speech stuttering, "But, but as the price for granting the wish-"

"Let the Pope henceforth have the pains produced by himself and those around him, and the pains produced on this island, sacrificed to him."

[Are you ...... making a wish to God?]

The guest smiled at the fourteen year old Heart: [It's okay, I'll grant you everything you wish for].

[But the price is that from now on, you and those around you who suffer because of you will be sacrificed to me.]

Heart blinks very slowly, and his fingers, bound up in bone chains, twitch spasmodically.

...... So long ago, he self avoidance in general, in eighteen years old that time to see Bai Liu, have not been able to ask this question out, he knew he was in fear of the answer.

But the answer, when it did come, was conversely not to be feared; it was as if his emotions, his brain, and even his soul had become a blank, an infinite blank.

First, he sells the island to his father, who exploits all the people on the island according to his own desires to create suffering, and then selects him so that he can again mutilate those who exploited him back then in the process of resistance, creating a second suffering, and induces him not to kill them, prolonging the suffering of both parties indefinitely by means of a trial.

--A rather beautifully calculated, doubled, oh no, infinitely multiplied sacrifice of pain.

From start to finish, it was all what he expected.

He was just a link in the game that Bai Liu, the bad god, had intentionally designed on earth.

Heart pupils lax to look straight ahead, straight ahead of the rock there is a gap, from that gap, can vaguely see the island outside the rain, with the pattering of a slight sound, so that all the boiling emotions are peaceful, like the night he made a wish to Bai Liu.

[The price I have to pay for the fulfillment of my wish is the sacrifice of pain to you?] Heart asks him softly, [Is the sacrifice of pain important to you? Is it true that without the sacrifice of pain, you would cease to exist?

[No, if I did cease to exist because of this, I would instead take pleasure in it.] That guest sighed softly like sorrow.

Heart inquired suspiciously, "Then why do you need me to sacrifice my pain?

[Because ......] the guest smiled and answered him, [The soul that bears pain is interesting and beautiful].

The guest with the strange mask smiled, extended his hand, and said to him, "This time, are you going to see the earth with me?"

They went to the crowded train, where the guest smiled and said to him, [I put a bomb in that man's mirror].

Heart looks curiously at the man in the carriage holding up a huge mirror and asks, [Why would you put a bomb in that man's mirror?]

Guest laughed a little, [Because it's a game I designed].

[Won't a lot of people die if it explodes like this?]] Heart asked in confusion, [Why was it designed this way?]

The guest laughed and answered him-

-[Don't you think this is an interesting design?